The accurate monitoring of television advertising is extremely important to the marketing efforts employed by a wide variety of different industries. Because of the significant advertising revenues involved and the competitive nature of television advertising, there is a great demand for information relating to television advertising which can be obtained through the accurate monitoring of the television broadcast material.
It is extremely valuable, particularly in highly competitive markets, for a company to ascertain the nature and extent of a competitor's television advertising. Among other information, marketing trends, advertising expenditures, marketing strategy, shares in the market place, and sales campaigns can all be ascertained through the monitoring of television advertising. The information acquired through television monitoring can provide competitors with relevant marketing information concerning the frequency and nature of the competitor's advertising. In addition, new product information becomes available almost as soon as the product is test marketed. In addition to assisting competitors in evaluating the market place, relevant information can also provide sales leads to individual stations, networks and newspapers. Of course, the reliability of the information is in large part dependent upon the accuracy in which the television advertising is monitored.
Many of the monitoring techniques which have been employed have typically relied upon prior knowledge of the broadcasting schedules of individual commercials or upon a particular coding of some part of the audio or video portion of the film or tape on which the program information had been previously recorded. The reluctance of the advertisers to voluntarily divulge advertising strategies, either prematurely or otherwise, has resulted in monitoring techniques which in large part have been unsuccessful.
Reliable and complete information has been available only by individual monitoring of live television broadcasts or the individual monitoring of tape recordings of the television broadcasts. Although reliable, this type of monitoring is extremely inefficient since the individuals monitoring the television commercials must spend a significant amount of time viewing actual program material rather than just the television commercials.